Removal of Musconetcong River Warren Glen Dam

Free flowing Musconetcong River

musconetcong.org   Musconetcong Watershed Association  I don't have a date as to when the project is slated to get physically done, but I got the written press release from the Musconetcong Watershed Association, which has no link to it, but informs us about funding. Quoted below is information about the check itself copied from that release. The two links I have provided for you will tell you more about the Warren Glen Dam and the removal of it coming, as well as about other dam removals the Musconetcong Watershed Association shares critical responsibility for. 

"To advance this project, MWA will present NJDEP with a check for $210,000 on Thursday, February 29, 2024, from 11 am to 12 pm at the MWA River Resource Center, 10 Maple Avenue, Asbury, NJ 08802. MWA received this nationally appropriated funding from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for preliminary studies needed to remove the dam, and coordinated efforts with New Jersey Fish and Wildlife, a partial dam owner, to strategize the removal of the dam. These funds will be used to finish an engineering report critical to the execution of the project.

The event will feature remarks from NJDEP Commissioner Shawn LaTourette, MWA President Richard Cotton and MWA Executive Director Tom Dallessio, followed by a presentation of the $210,000 check to NJDEP, symbolizing the mutual commitment to this crucial environmental restoration effort. Attendees are also invited to join a tour of the historic Asbury Mill and Musconetcong Island Park, showcasing the direct benefits of the project to the community and environment," says the Musconetcong Watershed Association.

It's been an exciting decade and some additional years, regarding all of the dam removals and stream restorations. I've done my best through these years to keep abreast of and report on the issues not only in the blog, but for different news outlets, including the New Jersey Herald, Central New Jersey News, and USA Today. I know the work I've done is not as much as some have expressed desire of me to do, but first and foremost I can say I'm proud of the work they and others have done. To be associated with these dam removals at all is a good thing.  

Burnt Mills Dam Removal

Wading to Where I Expected Trout

I caught the trout where I expected to catch one. For months, I've thought of going to Neshanic and making my way downstream. There's a spot I know about from way back. All this time, I've imagined finding trout there.

I didn't expect to go to Neshanic today. There's another stocking point from where I would have walked well upstream. With the snow on the ground, though, I didn't find any parking. 

Beginning elsewhere, however, was an interesting exercise I decided upon as I drove from Bedminster. A spot where I've never got skunked. Today, I waded out, got into position, and then I noticed the brown of flood detritus and bare trees looked distinctly rust-colored in the sun. That was really quite unexpected and it surprised me, my emotional response lowering my anticipations even deeper into realism, everything about the trout seemingly brought low as if none held in the currents now. The sap of life gone like a rusted car body, and I got not a tap. 

Then I drove from there to Neshanic, where the water above the white bridge is very interesting, but nothing hit. Another guy came down. We talked for a few minutes, and then he took position a hundred feet above me. 

I started wading downstream. 

My lower back has been giving me trouble today, and it wasn't entirely comfortable out there for that reason. Temperature got up to at least 39, and I never felt cold. Not my bare hands, either, except for my left hand after I released a sucker I had snagged. Never troubled with gloves. It did take effort wading my way downstream, but it was a pleasurable way to release mere convenience. I cast as I went, aware that maybe there'd be a trout my black maribou jig would cross paths with. It wasn't until I got a cast right on the spot where I expected trout, that I got hit, and I played the fish patiently. It put up a good fight on my four-foot, six-inch St. Croix ultralight, but was only about 15 inches. A couple of casts later, I hooked another, but it got off. 

I might have got a foot or two of better reach with a five-and-a-half-foot ultralight, and I have one by Shimano, and another I built from a St. Croix blank, but my casts pretty much got where I wanted them to go. I was aware they were a little short sometimes. I like that little rod, though. The fight of the sucker I snagged in the back was a lot of fun. I thought I had a smallmouth. 

It wasn't, I believe, true that I "had" to do some trekking to catch trout. I know people today suspect everyone is lying, but the guy I spoke to seemed an aboveboard character. I decided to come back his way to tell him of my catch. He also told me of his!

"It was only five minutes after you headed down that way," he said. "It was 18 inches. I put it back."

"Good to know there's some fish."

Told me he caught it on a worm. Another reason I don't believe he lied.

There's a line you cross between the online world and the real world. But what is the online "world"? Everything that has become routine within its parameters. This post is part of it, but it does point to what lies beyond, and that's a world very similar to the world I lived out during the 1970's. A world in which I felt free, except when I was in school. I got beyond school every day, fishing, and otherwise. A world exists that the online cannot capture. It's always moving. It can't be caught. It can only be lived.   

January a Year Ago

 

Califon Dam Removals and River Restoration

 

Sluiceway down below the dam in the town of Califon. This spot is now posted. According to Dumont, it "always holds fish." My son and I failed to catch any on that March day I photographed Matt trying. We tried and tried. Interestingly, sunlight singled him out when I shot the photo, so he was overexposed. He alone, which is kind of cool, even though it destroyed the photograph for any large print use. You can tell because his face and hands are grey. I compensated by reducing highlights in Lightroom, but the overexposure was too much.

I'm writing an article for The Fisherman about the South Branch Raritan River. Should be published in June. I interviewed one of the many guides working for South Branch Outfitters, Gerry Dumont, gathering information about the river. I always collect a lot more than I can use, which got me thinking this time: I can use some of it for my blog. Information I can't use for the magazine. I felt inspired by what I will relate to you as too important not to divulge. 

According to Dumont, "We're gonna have a little bit more trout water--what I consider trout water--by, not this trout season, but the following one. We're expecting in June, at least the dam above the shop, I'm pretty sure that's coming out this summer. And we're hoping that the other dam below the shop--the big dam in town--that's planned to be coming out, too, and they're going to restore, it's got to be close to two miles of river. That will lower the water temperature in the (Ken Lockwood) Gorge three or four degrees in the summertime." 

So that's breaking news from a primary source. Stuff online about dam removal in Califon is very little and requires--besides what I screenshot, below--passing a paywall.

As I began to say in the caption to the photo above, we've lost some water between the town and Hoffman's Crossing Road just above the beginning of Ken Lockwood Gorge. As Dumont put it, "Some areas are now not able to be fished. With COVID, there was a lot of problems. Some places got posted." And he added, "Things happen, things get closed," but with the dam removals and the restoration, water worth respecting will become available. We don't expect another mass exodus into the outdoors as COVID inspired, so we can probably keep the newly flush riverscape.

With lower water temperatures and improved habitat brought about by river restoration, it's easy to imagine that the numbers of benthic organisms and their insect hatches will improve, and that, naturally, so will the wild and native trout population.    

(newjerseyhills.com)

Califon

Roscoe New York Trout Town USA

roscoeny.com Outdoor writer Jim Stabile sent me information on the Two-Headed Trout Dinner event at Roscoe, New York, in April. "Trout Town USA." That immediately made me think of my wife, because I had--fairly recently--spoken to her about the possibility of a future trip up there. I knew nothing of the dinner that celebrates the opening of fly fishing season. I had thought of the other attractions the town offers--little shops and restaurants--that might appeal to her. The dinner incorporates businesses in town, so there's more to it than trout fishing. Even so, in the final analysis, it's almost pointless for me to pitch the dinner as an event to attend, although she might like the town as a Bed & Breakfast destination.  

More than a decade ago, my son and I visited Roscoe, staying at a campground at town's edge. We actually camped beside the Beaverkill. That's where our allotted space happened to be located. It was August, and our main plan was to fish Pepacton Reservoir for smallmouths. The owner of the campground persuaded us to try for big brown trout, too, lending us a couple of rods rigged with color-coded weighted line and silver trolling spoons. We also rented the rowboat from him.

We caught no trout, but my son did catch a little smallmouth, and I caught a channel cat that looked like a trout. We jigged both of the fish, and many rock bass, besides. The water is so clear that the catfish was almost white, except for black spots. 

We had time to fly fish the Delaware River East Branch after lunch, catching nothing. We also checked out the confluence of the Beaverkill and Willowemoc, noticing some persistent rises, but the water felt about 70 degrees to me. Too warm to catch and release trout, so we didn't fish there. The West Branch was cold. 

What I remember best of all is getting up before first light the first morning, feeling how fresh the 48-degree air felt in August, building a fire, boiling water, making coffee and getting started on it, all before my son awoke. That might have been the best coffee I've ever had.

Roscoe Trip

New Jersey Shark Attacks

Dan Radel Asbury Park Press  The news story is about shark attacks on the rise, one of them in New Jersey last year, though not fatal. I wanted to add to the record, though the two incidents happened decades ago in the 1980's. I was attacked by a shark, but of course I never reported it. Nor did an acquaintance of mine, after I witnessed him get attacked. Both incidents were nothing to alarm authorities about.

We were clam treaders. I held a commercial license, my acquaintance recreational. Both incidents happened along a deep channel where large boats travel. I clammed alone minutes from sunset, up to my shoulders in brine where I worked the edge of the drop off lowering down into 15-foot depths. My back was turned towards those depths for a moment, when a tremendous pressure wave knocked me forward. I knew that had to be a brown shark, but a big one. They have teeth but don't use those teeth on people. But they will careen into you with great force. 

That's more like what happened to the other guy. The shark came at him at waist level, and he actually got his forearms underneath it, lifting it out of the water, which I witnessed. Not a very big shark. It appeared to be about four feet long.

Since it happened after the big one had me walking steadily to my boat, I immediately remembered that solitary incident. I had never panicked, but it made me feel uneasy. The size of the shark felt scary. Its pectoral fin must have come very close to clipping me with a lot of force. 

It's funny, but I remember the sun from just after it happened to me. Big and red, but still just a little sky underneath it, summertime. I walked towards the sun as I walked towards my boat. It's as if, on an unconscious level, I took enough of a scare to feel especially drawn to the life force. 

Sunlit Temps Over 40 Stimulate Winter Trout

Any of us sometimes depart for an outing not expecting much more than the quality of the day. It will almost be enough. Last I got out before today, the temperature was 38 degrees and rain fell hard, mixed with some snow. I fished as hard, wading on downstream, knowing that if I happened to put my jig in front of a trout, I might get hit. So I worked at that, and yes, eventually I did get hit. Hard. But I missed it. That happened in a stretch where I caught a 15-inch wild brown in November 2022, so it might have been another one or even the same fish I released. 

Today the air was almost dead calm. The sky cloudless, The temperature about 43. Last night was cold enough that I noticed thick skim ice on one of the ponds in my neighborhood. I wanted to hit the river while the sun was high and the temperature nearly peaking out. I'm not especially experienced at catching the winter stockers, but I hear that they hit especially before the sun begins to get low, when its rays warm the water a little. Temperatures above 40 accompanying that light on the water and on the rocks underneath are especially desirable. Trout get caught on frigid days, but supposedly they prefer such days as today.

Even so, I wasn't especially ready for the fish, even though I caught them at the spot I visited today in January and February of last year. My first cast resulted in a fish on for a few seconds. Shortly thereafter, I hooked up and played a nice rainbow almost to the net before it got off. That's when I felt I'd had all the action I'd get, but I not only netted three rainbows within a half hour, I missed a hit after I caught those fish. Among the three I caught, two were a little over 16 inches, the other 15 inches.

All the fish I caught and lost felt especially eager to strike, as if the sunlight and the relatively mild temperatures had stimulated them. It's possible the two I lost were the first trout I caught. The one I nearly netted looked like the first one I did get in the net. If so, that was an eager trout for being so plump. (The other two I caught were skinny.) The hit I missed shortly before I decided to leave gave me the clue to not all the trout being very willing, however. It was a subtle, noncommittal, pull. Repeatedly, I cast back to the spot, but nothing more happened. 

Cold Rain
 

From Small Florida Species to New Jersey Channel Bass

Tight Lines Al Ristori Going to try and comment on the link posts for now on, because I learned that a website gets penalized for the bad search engine optimization practice of "thin content." That of not saying much! I know you like my newsy links, because I see the numbers of people opening the posts from their phones. How many of you click on them from laptops, I don't know. So going forward, if you just want the article I link to, click the link and ignore the rest, but then again, maybe my words will add to the time out of time, so to speak, a little reading provides.

Ristori was out fishing with Crazy Alberto Knie in the Florida Everglades recently, catching a number of small inshore species, including one they could not identify. Ristori got a photo and figured he'd find the answer among his many books that have information about species from that area. No. 

When my son and I first fished the reef some six miles out to sea from Big Pine Key, I caught a very strange yellow fish. Bright yellow. That was 2007 when neither myself nor my son did digital photography, but I'm making a note to myself, because I have a print from 35mm film, and of course, I can scan that. Maybe I'll post it someday. Who knows, some of you might even know what!

I scrolled down a few posts to read about Ristori's skepticism about climate change. He opens with a compelling quote from Thomas Jefferson, but for me, the most interesting part of his post is about channel bass, exactly what I called redfish, red drum, or simply reds when I was a boy. Ristori makes the point that this southern species was abundant in New Jersey--and called channel bass--a hundred years ago. 

So I looked online. Sure enough, I found corroborating evidence in the Bass Barn, from 2014. The comment thread includes information about abundant oysters and clams inshore having sustained the reds.

Found the photo! Had forgotten the purple on the fish.